The AdLib Gold clone! Testing the GoldLib sound card

The legendary Adlib Gold 1000 card has been cloned! Along with its elusive surround sound module.

[destineerrush]

For anyone interested, the "Surround Module" is a Yamaha YM7128B. Even the official datasheet calls it a "surround processor" so that's probably why AdLib did also. It's actually a fairly simple chip. it has 16 audio taps (8 each for L/R channels), with customizable gain and delay times. It also only has a single feedback tap, which is why the "reverb" sounds so fluttery/echo-y. The reverb effect on an AWE32 or similar card is actually much better, but for 1992, this would have been the only game in town short of an expensive external midi module.

[MathiasShaw]

I just love how the community keeps the support going for these old machines. ^_^

[bituniverse]

I loved this. Just the 20 minutes of just about nothing but MIDI goodness.

[DeinonychusCowboy]

I don't even know much about retro audio or audio in general and I still went "oh dang that sounds amazing" as soon as it started playing

[K-o-R]

Funny how musical pieces that were probably designed to show off the capabilities of the sound card tend to be real bangers.

[kairon]

My ears and Philips headphones thank you.

These sounded amazing. the 2nd last one gave me a vague memory of a game called Afterlife but only a few notes of it.
Now I miss 80's to 90's PC music.

As a fan of old school point and click games I had no idea Dune had one as well. Though it's a much older era than what I enjoy. That flight takeoff is super cool.

[AlyxxTheRat]

Very glad I listened to this in headphones. Those effects sound really good to me. The Stadium effect almost gave it a SNES vibe.

Also this card would've been perfect to play Blake Stone Aliens of Gold with lmao

[adultkarate]

Well, the “surround” effects certainly fooled my cat, one of those midi tom rolls made her jump (I have wide stereo separation here) 😄

[PXAbstraction]

Doing a replay of DUNE is on my to-do list for my live streams. This game was so overshadowed at the time by DUNE II, but it was a really interesting management adventure game and yeah, that soundtrack is absolutely stellar.

[TheRealLetharos]

So the surround worked on my home theater system. The songs were coming through all sides on surround. When dropped to mono it only came out the center.

Neat stuff. Great tunes! It's like Carpenter Brut.

[Ikkepop]

God I love that OPL sound, it reminds of me a child playing the Sega Genesis and PC DOS Games, it has this gritty, dirty quality to it, and it doesn't feel like it aged at all, as opposite to something like the SNES (or many other wavetable based synth systems from the period) which has low bitrate samples as basis for it's instruments, they sounded impressive at the time bud aged so badly. No reverb will ever save a low bitrate sample, it will always just sound like its playing from under a blanket.

[aner_bda]

I miss the days when good soundcards were something sought after as much as graphics cards. Nowadays, most people, at best, just plug headphones into a cheap USB DAC and call it a day when gaming. I miss the good ole days sometimes.

[KzintiCV]

The music playing through that card is probably the best Dune-related thing I've ever encountered.

[Dodo-bfdm]

These sounds are so nostalgic! So many games from the day used the Adlib features of the SB, that I can't hear the adlib without remembering so fondly every PC game from that era!

[notthatfatboy]

11:06 gave me Sega Road Rash vibes. For a clone, this thing is amazing. Good video as always Jeremy!

[slightlyevolved]

I think Adlib's marketing team really did a disservice to this by just calling it a "surround" module instead of really pushing the DSP functionality. If theyd made it clearer how much it actually did, it might have sold better back in the olden times

[Veel]

Could you record a playlist before sending it back? The Win midis and a few games? This really sounds cool...like nostalgia dipped in chocolate!

[DS]

What kind of sorcery is this? My 5.1 surround sound was playing things in ways I've never heard, I didn't even think YouTube supported that.

[henryokeeffe]

I love that that Altera (Intel) FPGA could probably hardware emulate an entire PC from that era

[visualdarkness]

It's incredible how great MiDi like this can sound. It's so darn clean and dynamic.